For over thirty years, Stephen E. Braude has studied the para-normal in everyday life, from extrasensory perception and psychokinesis to mediumship and materialization. "The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations" is a highly readable and often amusing account of his most memorable encounters with such phenomena.

Here, Braude recounts in fascinating detail five particular cases - some that challenge our most fundamental scientific beliefs and others that expose our own credulousness. Braude begins with a south Florida woman who can make thin gold-colored foil appear spontaneously on her skin. He then travels to New York and California to test psychokinetic superstars like Joe Nuzum, who claims to move objects using only his mind.

Along the way, Braude also investigates the startling allegations of K. R., a policeman in Annapolis who believes he can transfer images from photographs onto other objects - including his own body - and Ted Serios, a deceased Chicago elevator operator who could make a variety of different images appear on Polaroid film. Ultimately, Braude considers his wife's surprisingly fruitful experiments with astrology, which she has used to guide professional soccer teams to the top of their leagues, as well as his own personal experiences with synchronicity - a phenomenon, he argues, that may need to be explained in terms of a refined, extensive, and dramatic form of psychokinesis.

Heady, provocative, and brimming with eye-opening details, "The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations" will intrigue both adherents and detractors of its controversial subject matter.